Film England, 1990-2008: (Trans)National Cinema, English Literature and Narratives of the Past and Present

本项目考察了1990年以来制作的关于英国和英国特性的电影。当代电影无论是在制作、发行还是接受层面，都很少尊重国界。关于英格兰和英国特色的电影可能是在外国拍摄的，或者是由外国电影人拍摄的，或者是由外国资本拍摄的。然而，“国家电影”的概念仍然流行——尽管批评性的争论通常指的是英国电影，而不是英国电影，而英格兰和其他本土电影的官方机构是英国电影委员会。从历史上看，英格兰和不列颠在不同的时间以不同的方式命名同一块领土。该项目采用了文化史的视角，借鉴了对一系列“英语”和其他电影的制作、发行、营销、展览、票房表现和评论接受的研究。我也对这些电影进行主题、风格和意识形态的分析。该项目扩展了我以前工作中发展起来的思想、争论和历史，包括关于国家电影概念、传统电影和最近英国/英国电影的出版物。这个项目有三个部分。第一部分考察了民族电影的概念，因为它与当代英国电影有关。我在这里探讨的问题是：地方、国家和全球之间的关系，以及批判性辩论中“跨国”和“后国家”电影概念的出现；最近的英国电影（尤其是理查德·柯蒂斯（Richard Curtis）的作品《诺丁山》（Notting Hill）和《真爱至上》（Love Actually））对民族共同体意识的表达；电影景观和建筑中的英国形象；以及最近的“后民族主义”电影（如古林德·查达的作品《像贝克汉姆一样弯曲》、《新娘与偏见》）挑战和重新塑造传统期望的方式。我还对过去二十年来最重要的英国制作公司Working Title进行了案例研究，用工业和文化方面的问题来解决使用“英国电影”这个概念的困难。该项目的第二部分考察了英国电影和英国文学之间的关系，从散文小说改编为电影、自觉电影文学的写作，以及文学在关于电影、文化能力和品味的辩论中所起的作用。这三个案例研究分别着眼于简·奥斯汀的改编，以及相关的电影，如传记片《成为简》；对近几十年来出版的英国通俗小说和经典小说的改编；以及“文学电影”的批判概念，因为它一直被运用在电影评论中，从《劝导》（Persuasion）到《莎翁情史》（Shakespeare in Love）到《时时刻刻》（the Hours）等等。项目的第三部分考察了不同版本的过去电影如何构建不同的英格兰和英国身份，并解决不同的观众。我通过考虑历史史诗、前现代时期的表现和最近的发展，超越了我以前在遗产电影方面的工作。我将讲述更加“精致”和“文明”的现代（1800年后）过去的电影与讲述肮脏、危险和遥远的中世纪和早期现代时期的电影进行了对比。我将大制作的史诗版本与遥远的过去进行对比。《亚瑟王》（King Arthur）)，专为年轻男性设计，而更亲密的古装剧则突出了浪漫小说的乐趣（例如《亚瑟王》）。“穿薰衣草的女士”)，为女性观众设计。我还探讨了传统英格兰更美丽的景象如何受到肮脏的现实主义的挑战，这种现实主义影响了奥斯汀的世界，就像中世纪或工业英格兰/英国一样。我在海伦娜·博纳姆·卡特、凯拉·奈特利和其他人的作品中，对传统电影的小众明星和表演模式进行了案例研究，探讨了类似的紧张关系。

This project examines filmic representations of England and Englishness produced since 1990. Contemporary cinema rarely respects national boundaries, whether at the level of production, distribution or reception. Films about England and Englishness may be made in a foreign country, or by foreign filmmakers, or with foreign capital. Yet the concept of national cinema still has currency - although critical debate usually refers to British, not English, cinema, while the official body for cinema in England and the other home nations is the UK Film Council. Historically too, England and Britain have named the same territory at different times and in different ways. The project adopts the perspectives of cultural history, drawing on research on the production, distribution, marketing, exhibition, box-office performance and critical reception of a range of 'English' and other films. I also undertake thematic, stylistic and ideological analyses of those films. The project expands on ideas, arguments and histories developed in my previous work, including publications on the concept of national cinema, on heritage film and on recent British/English cinema. The project has three strands. The first examines the idea of national cinema as it relates to English cinema in the contemporary period. The issues I explore here are: the relationship between the local, the national and the global, and the emergence of the concepts of 'transnational' and 'post-national' cinema in critical debate; the articulation of a sense of national community in recent English films (especially the work of Richard Curtis [''Notting Hill', 'Love Actually']); iconographies of Englishness in the landscape and architecture of films; and the ways in which recent 'post-national' films (such as the work of Gurinder Chadha ['Bend It Like Beckham', 'Bride and Prejudice') challenge and re-work traditional expectations. I also develop a case study of the most important English production company of the last two decades, Working Title, using industrial and cultural concerns to address the difficulty of using the concept 'a British film'.The second strand of the project examines the relationship between English cinema and English literature, in terms of the adaptation of prose fiction to film, the writing of self-consciously cinematic literature, and the role that the literary plays in debates about film, cultural competence and taste. The three case studies in this strand look respectively at Jane Austen adaptations, and related films such as the bio-pic 'Becoming Jane'; the adaptation of English novels, both populist and canonical, published in recent decades; and the critical concept of the 'literate film' as it has been wielded in reviews of films, from 'Persuasion' to 'Shakespeare in Love' to 'The Hours' and beyond. The third strand of the project examines the ways in which different filmic versions of the past construct different visions of England and English identity, and address different audiences. I move beyond my previous work on heritage films by considering historical epics, the representation of pre-modern periods, and recent developments. I contrast films about the more 'refined' and 'civilized' modern (post-1800) past with films about the dirty, dangerous and distant past of the medieval and early modern periods. I contrast big-budget, epic versions of the distant past (e.g. 'King Arthur'), designed to address young males, with more intimate costume dramas that foreground the pleasures of romance fiction (e.g. 'Ladies in Lavender'), designed with female spectators in mind. And I explore the ways in which more picturesque visions of heritage England are challenged by a dirty realism that infects the world of Austen as much as medieval or industrial England/Britain. I explore similar tensions in a case study of heritage cinema's niche stardom and modes of performance, in the work of Helena Bonham Carter, Keira Knightly and others.